The A13 meets Keats

It’s not often the A13 and Keats are mentioned in the same breath. Thanks to East London filmmaker Christopher Smith for sending me his latest short film Arterial. Chris explains: “It’s an experimental adaptation of the Keats’ poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci and heavily influenced by dream states and psychogeography. It has a great soundtrack by electronic artists Isan (Morr Music).” Smith grew up in Benfleet and Arterial was shot in Basildon, Thurrock and Canvey. The film is certainly atmospheric, emphasising the hypnotic monotony of the motorway, and Essex looks great, with lots of sweeping vistas of the pylon-pocked landscape from the A13 stretching to the Thames and Keats’ femme fatale loitering on the hard shoulder before enticing the hero to amorous destruction amid the elfin grottos of the Essex hinterlands. Sort of thing that normally happens after a night out in Bas Vegas, where Keats was a regular, apparently. Click on the link to view.